Hector Alvarez
I’m a fresh-off -the-plane newcomer here in Canada, originally from Argentina. I’ve been here for five months, and I’ve been looking around for job opportunities on the side just to gather some English Language Teaching (ELT) experience Canada.
The question is not whether I, myself, believe I’m good enough to teach English within this ESL (as opposed to EFL) context, but whether local recruiters believe so. At the end of the day, they have the final word on whether I get hired or not.
I think this a thought that some of my fellow Non-Native English Speaker (would-be) Teachers ponder as well. Perhaps, back in our home-countries we had the advantages of personal connections (that I do not yet have as a new-comer). Also, back in our home-countries, we had the advantage of speaking our students’ L1, being able to harness this resource in many different ways. (e.g.: clarification during communicative break-down, translation of abstract concepts difficult for students to understand from explanations in the L2, contrastive analysis of language).
Here, the stakes are different. Depending on the recruiters’ view of what a “good” teacher is, we could simply be seen as a non-native speaking applicant with a more or less obvious “language handicap” (Medgyes, 1994). Indeed, a study by Zhang and Zhan interviewed recruiters based in Canada. Four out of the six recruiters interviewed mentioned the importance of proficiency for Non-Native English Speaker Teachers (NNESTs) some emphasizing on the “near-native” factor, whatever “near-native” means for them. The other two interviewees expressed a strong preference for so-called native-speakers. Equating a proficient speaker of a target language to a successful teacher of it is simply an inaccurate judgement based on a Nativespeakerist ideology ( Holliday, 2006).
On the bright side, there are a few aspects to teaching that go beyond being either on the native/non-native side of the dichotomy. First, at the time of a job interview, it’s important to let our experience as teachers shine through in the way we talk, to demonstrate we know how to deliver a proper lesson and that we can appropriately apply our methodological knowledge. Second, the fact that we are fluent in at least one other language is still useful if there is a community of students that share our L1, as that will still give us an edge compared to monolingual teachers (I guess the more languages you speak, the better; especially if you also speak French in this context). Third, the fact that we have had to learn this language, as opposed to acquiring it in a naturalistic setting, gives us the advantage of understanding how the morphosyntactic and semantic mechanisms of English work. Last but not least, students are greatly motivated when they know that their teacher has become a successful role-model of the target language through hard work for years, in comparison to a native speaker, who was “born into the language”.
A final note of caution. As Braine (1999) and Medgyes (1999) have pointed out, these advantages a non-native teacher has do not make up for lack of proficiency. Although I’ve mentioned that proficiency in a language does not equate to being a successful language teacher, proficiency in the target language is a fundamental aspect within our teaching tool-set. Part of being invested, successful teachers entails going beyond the class to make the English language part of our identity and daily life. I’ll leave it to you to figure out the details.
To conclude, I’d say I’ll be trying to showcase all the good things we non-native teachers have during my interviews. With time, I’ll be able to get a sense of what recruiters prioritize in the Canadian context.
Prompts:
As a non-native (would-be) teacher, do you have any concerns in terms of employment opportunities?
How do you think we can best inform students, recruiters and other teachers in regarding Nativespeakerism? How do you think we can help them go beyond the “native speaker” fallacy?
References
Braine, G. (1999). Non-native educators in english language teaching. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.
Holliday, A. (2006). Native-speakerism. Elt Journal, 60(4), 385-387.
Medgyes, P. (1994). The non-native teacher. London: Macmillan.
Medgyes, P. (1999). Language Training: A Neglected Area in Teacher Education. In G. Braine (Ed.), Non-Native Educators in English Language Training(177-195). Mahwah, New Jersey: L. Erlbaum Associates.
Zhang, F., & Zhan, J. (2014). The knowledge base of non-native english-speaking teachers: Perspectives of teachers and administrators. Language and Education, 28(6), 568-582.
Oh boy, my favourite topic! My entire thesis is about nativespeakerism in Japanese language learning contexts here in Montreal, so I am very personally invested in espousing the innumerable benefits of non-native speakers in language education contexts.
As for your questions, I did have concerns about my employment opportunities as a Japanese instructor in Canada. When I applied to work as a teaching assistant, I felt that it was a huge long shot. I figured that as soon as a native speaker applied, my application would go directly in the bin without even really being looked at. Imagine my surprise when I was called in for an interview! As soon as I sat down, I immediately started trying to explain myself and why I was there. The instructor for the course, a native Japanese speaker from Japan, listened carefully as I explained how my experience teaching English in Japan had taught me that many young Japanese children found me to be an unrelatable figure in the classroom, despite my employers pushing me as the model that those students should attempt to emulate. Sure, some of them did, but many didn’t, and after one particularly eye opening encounter with a 13-year-old who told me that “of course English is easy for [you].” As a native English speaker, she felt that I couldn’t possibly understand or empathize with her experience, and she was right. She needed her Japanese English teacher to take on a more prevalent role in the classroom, but because of nativespeakerism (amongst other complex factors), he did not. After the interview with the professor, she told me that she was a big believer in the importance of near peer role models (check out Tim Murphey’s work for more!) and thus was eager to take me on as her TA. We’re now in our second year working together!
As for how we can best inform students, recruiters and other teachers about Nativespeakerism, I think we just need to talk about the topic more. There is already a fairly substantial base of research on English learning contexts, but in other languages, there is very little (this is where my work comes in). Nativespeakerism is a pretty insidious thing, and it’s not something people generally know they are even doing. I think more exposure to the variety that language speakers come in (ex. not all English speakers are white people) would be a great start, and from there, just talking talking talking! We get stuck in strange ways of thinking when we don’t talk about them with other people.
– Victoria
Victoria , thank you so much for telling me about Tim Murphy, I just checked out his bibilography. There’s stuff there that will be helping me with my research, Much appreaciated!
Victoria, you are reinforcing for me how much nativespeakerism is conflated with “nativelookerism.” Now that I know someone who is so close to the phenomenon in a language other than English (I mean you!), the experiences that Hector relates have taken on new meanings for me. Crump’s work on LangCrit—we’ll be reading it later in the course—will, I think, interest both of you.
Hector, as someone who has worked in both China and Canada, I have good news and bad news for you.
The good news is that Canadian schools are very different from those in China in their views of “nativespeakerism.” I agree with Mela that it is often a case of “nativelookerism” or, more simply put, racism. When I was in China I knew Chinese-born Canadian and American native English speakers who struggled to find work in Shanghai because, as the schools put very plainly, the students wanted to see a white face. I would add that China was also one of the few places where it was necessary to attach a headshot to your CV. In Canada, by contrast, a good percentage of the people working in schools are non-native speakers, so the industry has caught up in recognizing the value of having a non-native English speaking teacher. At the school where I work, the English program director is a non-native English speaker who taught for many years and will not hesitate to put any complaining students in their place regarding this issue. That said, there is very little job protection, especially in the private sector, and a lot of emphasis is placed on student evaluations and comments, which unquestionably put non-native English speakers (and minorities in general) at a disadvantage. I believe some schools explain to incoming students that their teachers may not be native speakers, but there could be more done during orientation to get them to understand the benefits. I don’t have much experience with the public school system in Quebec, but I know of many non-native English speakers who teach in public schools and CEGEPS as well. One thing I’ve wondered is whether it might actually be an advantage to be a native francophone to get an English-teaching job in that system…
Now, the bad news comparing China and Canada is that China is perhaps the world’s largest market for learning English as an additional language, to the point that, at least when I was there, it was a “seller’s market” where there was a shortage of teachers. So while schools may want to have a staff of white native speakers willing to work at a fairly low salary, they don’t necessarily have so much choice, whereas schools in Montreal in particular have a surplus of teachers. So while the ideology might be better, the job market is worse.
–Brian
Yo Brian, thaank you so much for your comment. Your experience makes me so curious that I will definitely want to know more. I’ll be asking you more through informal conversation in class 🙂
Hi Hector, I totally feel your concerns of Nativespeakerism. I have also seen so many ESL job posts saying “native English speakers only”. This concept is also so strong in Chinese society. Schools or language centers try to recruit native speakers even they don’t any background in teaching. I had an American friend in China, who was hired as an ESL teacher but he had no teaching experience. He suffered a lot at the beginning, because he did not explicitly know English grammars or class management. Besides, I also heard from some managers in my university that native English speakers can not teach courses other than “English oral speaking” or “English listening”.
My friend told me that sometimes he felt he was an advertisement for the school, instead of a teacher. Thus, for your second question concerning how can we inform “students, recruiters and other teachers” regarding Nativespeakerism, I think we may need more transformative social changes involving more stakeholders, such as parents and educators.
Mengting H.
Mengting, towards the end of your first paragraph you made a very interesting point, the fact that, in many cases, foreign teachers are relagated to teaching conversation classes. Indeed, the is commonplace, unless the foreign teacher is able to get direct hiring through a proper English-related department at university. I never, for instance, had the chance any Linguistics-related class (which I would love to) just because it was not withinthe EF portfolio, as 70% of the teachers would not have the slightest idea of what Linguistics or SLA is.
Native Speakerism
Ola Hector! To be honest I never knew that “nativespeakerism” was a thing. This could be due to the fact that majority of my language teachers have not been, in fact, native speakers of the languages they taught, and they were all quite excellent.
In high school my first Spanish teacher was the dapper, very British, Mr. Jones, or rather Señor “Honess” as he wished to be called. I will never forget his elegant little goatee and the proper manner in which he expressed that beautiful language, in other words, he was a good teacher, he captured our imagination and he knew his Spanish.
Beatrice
Hola Beatrice! I have to tell you. I’m not sure about what happens in other languages. The one paper I read once about Spanish teacher in American universities showed a unexpected results based on what I had expected. Students actually respected their professors (who were PhDs). I have the feeling that in the US there is more respect for qualifications and experience in comparison to other contexts. Also, sponsoring visas is not an easy task over there, so I think that’s another factor to consider in case they wanted to attract Native speakers. Still , i dont think they’d need to due to the growing numbers of Spanish speakers over there.
Hi Hector, I have to sadly admit that just as Brian said, although China is perhaps the world’s largest market for teaching English as the second language, in the meantime, there do exist “nativelookerism”. There was a living example when I studied for my undergraduate program in Tianjin Foreign Studies University. I got to know many non-native English speakers from Russia and Ukraine who came to our university to learn Chinese. Just because of their white face, they could easily be hired to teach children English in various private English teaching institutions, despite they did not know much about SLA, or their English was not so good and speak English with strong accent. On the contrary, I have another American friend who is a native English speaker, and she is a mixed-blood of Taiwanese and American. She is good at speaking Chinese, French and German. Additionally, she learned a lot about SLA because her master program was about second language education. Once she told me when she applied to teach English in an English institution, she got turned down because she had a “Chinese looking” face. When I heard this story, I got angry and thought it was really ridiculous! I also felt pity for these children and their parents. Even though these parents invested much money in children’s English learning, their children did not get the qualified teacher to teach them. If the market keeps recruiting English teachers in this way, they will miss the real qualified teacher. But when I calm down, I realize that the market is driven by the market demand. It is because many parents do not have an idea about what a qualified EFL teacher should be, and they are not familiar with any of the theories about SLA, then the result is they will falsely believe that only being taught by the “native English speakers”(“native” for them, intuitively or directly might mean that the teacher has a white face), can their children learn English well. So if we want to change the rules of market or the nativespeakerism in China, first and foremost, we should change the awareness of parents and students.
—-Dantong
Hi, Hector and everybody, this is indeed a great topic! I remember my frustration in Brazil trying to learn Japanese. Living in a small city, I did not have the option to choose a language school, there was only one! My teacher was a Japanese old lady that had immigrated as a child and had been working at the school for a very long time. I would not call her a bad teacher because I would not call her a teacher at all, she was just a Japanese person that happened to be in charge of the class. She had no idea what she was doing; I remember her saying “I don’t understand why you guys don’t speak Japanese yet” on our third year in the course. I knew very well why, but I did not have the courage to say anything…
Moreover, when I came to Canada, I was planning to teach Brazilian Portuguese because I would never imagine that, in a country of native speakers of English, a school would hire me. For my surprise, I got a job last than 2 months after I arrived! I do not need to say how pleased I was!
Having said that… *types shaking afraid of the rocks that will come*
I must say that there is one context where I would not be happy to have a non-native speaker as a teacher: if I had gone to a country to study the local language. Let me explain myself. Imagine me last year in Brazil (7 English schools just in my street). I decide that I want some real contact with English, so I pay a very expensive English course in Canada (multiplied by 3 because of the exchange rate) and I get on a plane (3 flights, around a 24-hour trip). Super happy and excited I sit in the classroom just to find out that the teacher is… Brazilian! Boy, I would be aaaaangry… Don’t get me wrong, I would also hate to have an 18-year-old Canadian “teacher” too. But, can you see my point?
Anyway… There you go, I said it and I stand by it! I would not hire MYSELF here in Canada! But, hey, if you would, call me, I am available. I can also teach Brazilian Portuguese. I mean, I do not have any experience, but I am a native! *runs for her life*
Ana
Dantong, your comment that “if we want to change the rules of market or the nativespeakerism in China, first and foremost, we should change the awareness of parents and students” hits the nail on the head for me…but raises the question, “HOW??”. Changing people’s perceptions isn’t something I know the recipe for! Ana, your comment is as perceptive as it is hilarious…and I think your ESL students here in Canada are LUCKY. So there!
Hello, Hector. I am definitely not in favor of native speakerism, and I would like to share my experience. I think I was lucky enough to attend ESL class in Minnesota, United States. I spent my entire summer vacation when I was a middle school student (ten years ago in July and August) in a language institute, and it still offers ESL courses for students whose L1 is not English. I will always remember an ESL teacher who also comes from Argentina. In addition to her English teaching, she always had a passion for teaching and helping students. On top of that, everyone loved to register for her class because of her creative teaching and personal qualities, especially her sense of humor. Besides, I have heard that there is a growing number of Chinese ESL teachers who are currently working well in North America. So, in response to your question (or your concern in the title?) “Am I good enough to compete in the local ESL market (in the eyes of recruiters)?” I guess you don’t have to be worried about the negative influence too much, though such influence is still there. Another point I would like to say is that it would be so ignorant of the recruiters if they fail to recognize the advantages of non-native speakers. If those recruiters judge a teacher simply based on the L1, I wish all the language institutes go bankrupt and thus shut down (I believe it would happen). After all, how is a language institute supposed to work best with only native speakers? Also, as pointed out in the previous post (by Mengting Hu), a teacher might “suffered a lot at the very beginning because he or she does not explicitly know English grammar (many students definitely need such knowledge to learn) or class management (probably have no experience and knowledge in teaching).” In a word, being a native speaker does not necessarily know how to teach a language and/or how to be a teacher.
-Chingheng